Last year, the Mt. Diablo school district cut three days from its school year. This year and through 2012-13, it hopes to negotiate seven furlough days with its teachers’ union, including five instructional days and two staff development days.

A policy brief called “Turning Back the Clock: The Inequitable Impact of Shortening California’s School Year,” released by Education Trust-West and other education advocacy organizations today, said shortening the school year hurts students, especially those who are poor or who are English language learners.

“Our policymakers have long applauded themselves for ensuring that California has some of the most rigorous academic standards in the nation,” said Arun Ramanathan, executive director of statewide education advocacy organization. “All California’s students, including the more than 50 percent of our students who are low-income and our 1.3 million English learners, deserve a full opportunity to learn those standards and perform on grade level. As a state with some of the widest achievement gaps and lowest student performance in the nation, reducing learning time in our schools should not be an option.”

AB 114 signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown allows school districts to shorten the school year by up to seven additional days if state revenues fall short of projections, which could result in 168-day school years in some districts.

“Our students deserve both the opportunity and time necessary to achieve their dreams of college and career,” Ramanathan said. “We call on the governor and the legislature to protect the rights of our children and prevent these harmful and inequitable cuts to the school year.”

Superintendent Steven Lawrence said in an e-mail that it is unfortunate that districts throughout the state need to balance their budgets by reducing school days.

“If we expect our children to complete (sic) both nationally and globally,” he wrote, “the state needs to fund education at a level that allows us to expand educational opportunities not reduce them.”

According to the report, most state school years are 180 days. Kansas is the state with the longest school year, at 186 days.

Some other countries, however, have much longer school years, including the Netherlands with 200 days, South Korea with 220 and Japan, which has 243 school days a year.

124 Responses to “Will fewer school days hurt students?”

Why are people working overtime and weekends at the Dent Center, to keep up with the work? I thought the rank & file were subject to the same cuts as the school sites, but they are making up for it – and then some – by all this overtime. Where is this money coming from?

@FT Management employees are not entitled to overtime. They are not keeping up with the work. they are just trying to keep the district running. Mistake. They really are just perpetrating the poor management of the board. It needs to implode in order to get better. Its a sad state of affairs.

No, I’m not talking about the management, I’m talking about the workers. The regular secretaries, clerks and assistants. They are working OT and weekends – on time sheets. They’re making as much, if not more, than before the cuts. But the school sites are hogtied.

Doctor J, the CV steering committee isn’t going to sue the district. They don’t have any reason to and it would take money they don’t have. They should admit they did a lousy job with the initial charter petition and actually put some serious work into rewriting it instead of trying to get a quickie approval or denial.

I read the CV petition and the District’s conditions. Then I checked into what large districts such as Los Angeles and San Diego require of charter petitions. It’s easy to see that the CV petition just didn’t measure up. No district would have approved it as written. MDUSD wasn’t being any pickier than other districts. In fact, they could have been much tougher on the CV petition. It was that bad. It’s also clear that most charter petitions have to go through several iterations before being approved. The CV charter steering committee should have done their research. They didn’t understand what was required of them.

Sadly, the steering committee still doesn’t understand what’s required of them. One of the steering committee members is posting on another blog that it really doesn’t matter what they turn in to MDUSD because it’s all just a draft and they don’t expect the governing board to be held to it. She’s wrong about that. Any material revisions to the charter have to be approved by MDUSD. But her statements show that the charter steering committee isn’t dealing with MDUSD in good faith. And that’s another reason why they’re not going to sue MDUSD.

There you go again. I am not a CV parent but I spoke to a charter expert at the State level who said the Clayton Valley charter is working with a very experienced and well qualified group. You are clearly a district employee, a board member, or a spouse of one of those because this is exactly what the Board tried to portray last time they had a charter application in front of them. Please tell me what makes you qualified to to be enough of an expert to make a statement like:

“In fact, they could have been much tougher on the CV petition. It was that bad. It’s also clear that most charter petitions have to go through several iterations before being approved. The CV charter steering committee should have done their research. They didn’t understand what was required of them.”

Unbelievable propaganda and not true. It is sad that you have to resort to lies in order to defend your position.

@CVParent #54 — You are a fiction writer. The most experienced people in MDUSD with charters are Sue Brothers and Deb Cooksey. Both have the same track record: oppose, deny and lose the appeal. However, no charter ever has had the support of such a variety of elected officials: US Representative, State Senator, two mayors, city council, etc. Gary has just flushed his future political career down the toilet.

A I think what is most illustrative of Another CV Parent is that she REFUSES to address here anything about the massive problems of the MDUSD and its leaders with their many crises/scandals.

Instead she lies about the charter and its supporters which according to her are a bunch of greedy, unaccountable, whats in it for me teachers without much public support. The locals all know that Pat, Neil and many others are in fact pillars of the community and there is massive public support to leave the MDUSD because of its inability to even admit its problems, much less solve them.

Meanwhile, Sue Brothers has lied to the classified staff saying they will lose their jobs if the charter passes.

Nonsense! The charter board even has a classified board member so right there they are already better represented then they ever were under the dictatorship of the MDUSD.

The teachers and their politican sidekick, Mayor Shuey, got other politicians to come out in support of a charter school? So what. Charter schools are one of the most politicized education issues out there. So I don’t think that’s much of a surprise. Nor does it sway my opinion one way or another. Do you believe any of those politicians actually read the Clayton Valley charter petition?

Someone asked what makes me an expert in charter petitions. I’d never read a charter petition before the CV teachers wrote their petition. I had no idea why the teachers started the teacher trigger process or what their goals were until I listened to what Middendorf and McChesney had to say and watched their presentations. I had no idea how other districts, more experienced with reviewing and approving charter petitions, evaluated them. So I did some research. I looked at their criteria. I looked what they said about actual petitions. I read other petitions. It’s

It’s too bad the Clayton Valley teachers didn’t do more research before they submitted their petition. They could have gained a better understanding of what is actually required.

How many of you actually read the petition the teachers turned in? I did. It was terrible, How many of you actually researched how other districts evaluate petitions and what they require of them? Give it a try. Look at what other large districts do, the districts that have evaluated – and approved – dozens and dozens of charter petitions. If you do that, you’ll see that the CV petition wouldn’t have been approved as submitted anywhere. The petition was full of “maybe we’ll do this or maybe we’ll do that… we haven’t decided” when it came to the educational plan for the charter. That kind of thing doesn’t fly in a charter proposal. Districts require definite educational plans with a financial plan to support what is proposed. The things the charter was definitive on were the items that would improve the work life for a teachers: lots and lots of detail on all the training they were going to provide for teachers, collaboration time built into the teachers workday, the teachers making decisions on new teacher hires, the teachers getting paid more, the governing board being controlled by school employees.

#55 says she was told the teachers are working with a very experienced, well qualified group. I assume you are talking about ExEd. Yes, ExEd is a southern California firm that is experienced in performing back office operations for charter schools, and CV is planning to hire them to do their back office functions. ExEd provided the three-year budget plan submitted to MDUSD. According to Mayor Shuey, ExEd provided the plan for free with the agreement that CVCHS would hire them for the first year of operation.

I found a charter petition in another school district that has a similar ExEd contract attached. Here’s what ExEd provides for the charter proposal: They give the proponents a generic budget based on charter schools with similar characteristics. Then, if the charter proponents have any specific financial information based on their own plans and situation, ExEd will adjust the financial plan accordingly. Here’s the problem for CVCHS. Their plans hadn’t gotten past the “maybe we’ll do this or maybe we’ll do that” stage, so their budget wasn’t worth much. In fact, when the District questioned the salary numbers, ExEd said those were just average charter salaries. The teachers hadn’t even provided their own salary information to ExEd. Given what a large part of a school budget is taken up with salaries, how could anyone think that budget plan was worth the paper it was printed on? There was no way the District could have given a clean approval to that charter.

As far as the teachers’ motivations, they were very clear at the beginning of this process: Clayton Valley would get more funding as a charter school than as a part of a unified district. That would enable the teachers to not have to take furlough days or endure the benefit bleeds that other MDUSD teachers will have to go through. They clearly stated that at the first informational meeting for the public where Middendorf and McChesney played the powerpoint presentation they had put together to convince the other teachers to sign the charter petition. It’s still up on their website if you want to see it for yourself.

So what did the teachers propose for the students? They said they wanted to have a summer orientation program for freshmen, reinstate summer school, build a theater… Eventually the charter school expert they had brought with them had to jump in and say that they needed to be realistic because it wasn’t going to be all that much more money. A parent pointedly asked Middendorf is she had a financial plan to show she could do any of the things she was proposing. She admitted that no, she didn’t actually have any financial numbers. When another parent asked McChesney what he most wanted to use the money for to improve the school, his answer was “uhh……..”. The parent prompted, “smaller classes?” “Yeah, that would be good.”

So here’s the problem. The teachers never came up with a solid educational plan to improve the school. Their charter proposal read like it was a list of random “wouldn’t it be nice” ideas they brainstormed one afternoon attached to a generic charter proposal they copied from a template. Then they attached the generic charter budget plan from ExEd. That doesn’t meet the requirements for a charter proposal.

Here’s the saddest part of all. The teachers thought the extra money for charter schools came from state. They didn’t realize that it would come out of MDUSD’s budget. What did they do when MDUSD told them and the public that the extra money comes out of MDUSD’s budget? They said MDUSD was wrong. They said MDUSD was lying.

Well, they’ve finally given up on the argument that MDUSD was lying about that. Now they’ve moved on to arguing that even though it comes out of MDUSD’s budget, MDUSD will still miraculously save money if CV goes charter. (Or MDUSD was spending too much money on elementary schools and now CV will finally get its fair share of the money. Take your pick. Both arguments are being made simultaneously.)

Once the teachers learned the truth about where the money comes from, they should have done the right thing and called a halt to the charter process. They should have said “We thought converting Clayton Valley to a charter would bring more money into our community to support our schools. But now that we know the truth, that it just takes away money from every other student and employee in MDUSD so that those of us at Clayton Valley can get a bigger piece of the pie, we are calling off this effort because we believe in the Clayton Valley motto of ‘Do the right thing’.” But they didn’t.

The charter steering committee needs to take a long hard look at their own actions. They should admit that they did a lousy job with the charter proposal. They should admit what they are doing will hurt every other student and employee in the District. And they should admit that their own behavior has been terrible. If anyone has any doubt about that last statement, go back and read the press releases from the charter steering committee. Start with Mayor Shuey’s letter to the Board regarding the Northgate principal.

“So what” if politicians like US Representative George Miller, State Senator DeSaulnier, State Representative Bonilla, the Mayors of Concord and Clayton support the charter?

You know what this means for you and your buddy Stevie Lawrence? Not only is he already the worst Superintendent in CA. He probably won’t be able to get another Superintendent job in CA when this is over and that is if he doesn’t lose his credential. Question is, who will you follow after Stevie is gone?

I can’t help but notice you won’t respond to my observation that you just conventiently ignore the many scandals and crises of Stevie and the other “leaders” of the MDUSD.

Your comment that “you have no idea why the teachers started the trigger process…” says it all in your refusal to address the scandal and crises of your buddy Stevie.

I guess for you the only crisis IS THE CHARTER since it will forever cement Stevie’s reputation as the WORST SUPERINTENDENT IN CA!

You are nothing more then a cynical minion in the district’s current corrupt leadership and their strategy of trying to thrwart the will of the people.

Not only will the charter be a rousing success, it will immensly help the rest of the MDUSD by bringing down Stevie and Co.

The charter will redirect their slice of the money back into the school and away from the corrupt machinations of the upper management of the MDUSD like Rolen getting a $27,000 RAISE to run transportation, which in fact has already cost the district close to a million dollars in overruns.

Another CV Parent,
I am so tired of the District argument that the money comes from the District and not the State. This is exactly one of the things wrong with this District. The money you refer to DOES NOT belong to the District, it is the money the State allocates to individual students in California (via ADA). The fact that MDUSD “claims” to spend the unified rate on high school students would be laughable if it wasn’t so outrageous.
You know it, and the Board knows it… the reason the State funds high schools at a higher rate is because it costs more to educate a high school student. If MDUSD is spending the same on their high school students as their elementary school students, they are more inept than I thought. So which is it INEPT or DISHONEST… it is one or the other.
Regardless the money is earned by the taxpayer, collected by the State, and distributed to the public education entity educating the student…. NO WHERE IN THAT PROCESS DOES THE MONEY BELONG TO THE DISTRICT!

WAM #31,
Get out your calculator again! On top of the $1.2 million, start adding on busing law suits and settlements, and how much will that be? And who will pay? Finally we know “where kids come first” because FIRST it will be subtracted from the children’s education! Enough district bungling! We’re all being robbed!

@Anon #68. Please, the election is now 12 months away. Its a waste of time and energy to do a recall now. I suggest you spend your time speaking to those who can investigate the district actions and take action against the district where violations are found.

G, Do those numbers include teacher pay? The District has already pointed out that our District’s elementary school teachers are more experienced than our high school teachers. Therefore, per the MDEA contract, they get paid more. I’m going from memory here, but I think MDUSD elemetary teachers make on average $9000 more than high school teachers.

Here’s a little “back-of-the-envelope” math for you. Let’s imagine it was the high school teachers that were more experienced instead of the elementary school teachers and made $9000 more. Multiply $9000 by 83 (the number of teachers at CVHS) and you get $747,000. Divide $747,000 by the number of students at CVHS (1868) and you get $400.

So if the high school teachers at CVHS were as experienced as the elementary teachers in MDUSD – and the elementary teachers were as inexperienced as the high school teachers – then the per pupil spending at CVHS would be $8249 and the elementary school numbers would be lower.

I’m not an expert at what goes into those per pupil numbers, but that’s an explanation that makes sense to me. Those numbers don’t mean the District is “shorting” CVHS. They just might show what the District has already explained. Our elementary teachers are more experienced and higher on the salary scale.

By all means, if you don’t agree with what Eberhart and Whitmarsh are doing, vote them out at the next election. That’s the way it works with a public school system here in America. We elect the school board. Unless it’s a charter school.

If CVHS turns charter you, as community members, will have no elected voice on the CVCHS governing board and no way to vote anyone off the board. As parents, we’ll only be able to vote for two of the nine board members. And any parent we want to elect to the governing board must first pass muster with a committee made up primarily of employees.

Notice again that Another CV Parent will not comment on any of the massive problems of the MDUSD.

So “Another…”,

What do you think about Greg Rolen getting a $27,000 raise to take on transportation considering he has now cost the district over 1 MILLION DOLLARS with his incompetence and with lawsuits it will only go up?

@Another CVP #71, If you don’t like the charter concept, you can send your child to one of the other fantastic MDUSD high schools — its the greatest form of democracy in action — vote with your feet. The charter becomes one of those “employee owned companies”. It will only succeed if parents support the charter. I guarantee you that if the charter doesn’t meet the needs of its “customers” it will fail. One other thing I can guarantee you — the CVCHS teachers can’t do a worse job than Eberhart, Whitmarsh, Mayo and Lawrence.

Another CV Parent,
I am so glad you brought up Superintendent Lawrence’s little exercise regarding teacher salaries. Another piece of information that may be accurate but is not honest.

These are average salaries that were quoted in the Superintendent’s memo. I am sure you know that there are many high school teachers who work less than full FTEs. While the high model lends itself to accommodating part time positions, elementary school programs inherently make being a part-time teacher much more difficult. So you can not leap to the conclusion that the average salary varies due to experience. In fact you can have a lower average teacher salary at a school site and a higher per pupil teacher cost.

If the District wanted to be honest, and not just accurate, they would tell us the salary costs attributed to CV as compared to elementary schools but instead the Superintendent decided to use “back of the napkin” math like you.

@Another: Your memory has failed you. Try not to believe the District’s reporting of “elementary teachers get paid more, and that is why they earn higher pay”. That, like much of what they say simply is not true.

@Another, sorry, I meant to say “elementary teachers are “more experienced” is why they get more pay”. THAT is not true. Look at Northgate; look at Oak Grove; look at Bancroft. Now tie teacher salary to school performance. That’s an easy one!

http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area/2010 Just plug in the parameters, and you can see what every employee makes in the school district. I’d love to know why the board members get benefits. Don’t they have jobs, or Medi-Care? Why does an elected job come with such generous benefits?

Stevie Lawrence is costing us $294,281.00.
Greg Rolen is costing us $231,861.00
Eberhart is costing us $27,460.00

Of course we know that they are costing us millions more then this with their flawed decision making.

Now that an aggrieved parent of a special ed child is suing the district over their messed up transportation I wonder how long it takes to become a CLASS-ACTION LAWSUIT involving many of ther parents who had their special ed students rights violated.

All it would take is a hot-shot lawyer to recruit a number of parents to join in and then convince a judge to certify it as a class action.

No doubt that Rolen will sub-contract out this work since it is obviously beneath him to do the work himself at $231,861.00/year.

G @66. It is clear and evident CVHS has been short changing its students and ignoring it’s problems for a LONG TIME. I hope to GOD this charter is passed, if for no other reason but to show the district and board that we’ve had enough. We’re taking back control of our school, and even if there are still questions about the finances, I have WAY MORE questions about the district’s finances and decision making. It is a classic “pot calling the kettle black” – this district is in shambles, they lie, they’re irresponsible, they can’t even provide data that a normal person can understand. That is how I know they are trying to be deceitful. Bryan Richards is SMART, smart enough to simple it up for us “common folk,” but he won’t.

In response to Dr. J’s question on Nov. 2, here’s a link to MDEA’s most recent bargaining update: http://library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1102938290270-101/Bargaining+Update+11-2-11+%234.pdf.
This shows the district’s ending balance was $18.8 million more than anticipated earlier in the year. Interestingly, the district appears to have removed Bryan Richards’ Powerpoint and the unaudited actuals report from the Sept. 13 agenda: http://esbpublic.mdusd.k12.ca.us/public_itemview.aspx?ItemId=4474&mtgId=307.
I recall seeing it posted before. I called the superintendent’s secretary and she said she thought it had been posted also. She said she did not remove it and would try to find out what happened to it.
Superintendent Steven Lawrence gave the Parent Advisory Council a copy of Richards’ Powerpoint, which showed “artificial ending balance inflation” related to SFFS money, tier 3 grants and unspent carryovers. He characterized the ending balance as being up by $7.6 million. This doesn’t include more than $10 million that the board already set aside to prepare for midyear cuts.
After subtracting the required reserve for economic uncertainties, IRS assessment and other expenses, the Powerpoint showed an undesignated ending fund balance of $30.8 million, or $7.6 million more than the $23.2 million originally estimated.
However, the district has built $6 million in savings from furlough days into its budget, including nearly $4.6 million for MDEA that haven’t yet been negotiated.
Previously, the district said it needed these furlough days to balance its budget even before midyear cuts. The district has also predicted that it would need to make about $2.4 million in cuts if CVHS converts to a charter.
Yet, according to the MDEA update, the district may be reversing its position regarding the furlough days. Now, instead of insisting that the furlough days are needed no matter what, the district appears to be willing to base the number of furlough days on the amount of midyear cuts, reducing the school year by one day for each $42 decline in per student funding, up to a maximum of seven days (of which five would be school days and two would be teacher in-service days).
If the district can afford to do this, its argument that cuts would be necessary if CVHS converts to a charter could also be questioned, since It appears to have a substantial amount of undesignated money in its ending fund balance.
Lawrence told the PAC that the IRS assessment has not yet been resolved in part because the IRS person who was working with the district has left and a new person is taking over the investigation.

@ #82- Our old friend, and close friend of Mildred Browne, Adria Angelo has been spotted working in Wing D. First question is how much is she being paid? I would guess in the $90,000 to $100,000 range. Second question is how does that money get approved and is it listed on any budgets? And final questions…couldn’t she get a job anywhere else? Or will only Mildred Browne hire her?

@Wendy, Many parallels between Oakland and MDUSD — except we have more schools in Title 1 Program Improvement. 🙁 Another interesting point is that when Deb Cooksey “left” Oakland as General Counsel she ended up in MDUSD, and she is point on the charter review. Too weird.

I do believe that this shift is a good thing. People are starting to wake up to what the District officials are doing.

Does anyone know if MDUSD has done the contracts for the non public school placements and if those schools are being paid? If they have not been paid it could be the reason why we have more money in the pot then anticipated.

Linda L, elementary school teachers work part-time by job sharing. My daughters had two years in elem. school where teachers get together to job share. An example of a job sharing schedule would be Teacher A working M-W-F and Teacher B working T-Th.

Anon #81, “we’re taking back control of our school” by converting to a charter? Unless you’re an employee of CVCHS, you won’t have control. Check out the composition of the governing board. Parents only get two out of nine seats on the board. The rest are occupied by school employees or people they’ve appointed.

The campaign against the charter is in full swing — Eberhart and Whitmarsh are courting community members to oppose the charter on financial reasons — something they can’t consider but something they do consider. Spreading disinformation that the loss of funds from the charter students will cause massive cuts in programs across the district. What this tells me is that indeed there will be a vote to approve or disapprove that the conditions have been met. The swing vote is Linda Mayo and she will have to put aside her prejudices to consider the finances, which legally she cannot, but is fully aware of, and vote her conscience as to whether she believes the Charter has substantially met the 56 conditions imposed upon them. If she follows the law, she will vote to approve even though she personally is not in favor of the Charter.

Quite frankly, I don’t think people are excessively concerned as to who is running the show (parent, teacher, banker, constrction worker, etc) as long as they feel the show is being run correctly. So, as some others have explained, I see the charter movement at CVHS overwhelmingly being motivated by dissatisfaction of the people presently running the show. I know the present people running the district have all these official credentials, but it doesn’t appear to have helped them to do it well enough to keep people satisfied, and they saw a way to give it a go themselves. More power to them. If they are able to do a better job of it, maybe all those official credentials don’t mean all that much. We have clearly heard your fear mongering about “turning the company over to the employees”, but have yet to hear what the present “company directors” are doing to really try to better things (Oh yeah, you gotta love all those solar panels. That has really improved the situation.). Maybe you could shed some light on those issues. We’ve heard your negatives. Bring on the list of positives.